Not P but DFW: of any sort
Mike Jing
gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Thu Jul 10 07:10:31 UTC 2025
The following excerpt is from David Foster Wallace's review of Bryan
Garner's *A Dictionary of Modern American Usage*:
The hard-line Descriptivists, for all their calm scientism and avowed
preference for fact over value, rely mostly on rhetorical pathos, the
visceral emotional Appeal. As mentioned, the relevant emotions here are
Sixtiesish in origin and leftist in temperament—an antipathy for
conventional Authority and elitist put-downs and uptight restrictions and
casuistries and androcaucasian bias and snobbery and overt smugness *of any
sort* … i.e., for the very attitudes embodied in the prim glare of the
grammarian and the languid honk of Buckley-type elites, which happen to be
the two most visible species of SNOOT still around.
Does the phrase "of any sort" modify the entire list of attitudes or only
part of it? If only part of it, which part?
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